


Blood and Bond and True

by Limesparrow



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: (that's basically what it is), Alternate Universe, Family Feels, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 14:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14696256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limesparrow/pseuds/Limesparrow
Summary: A second account of a series of events. Changelings make for excellent family, if one earns their affection.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ohana Means Family, It Means No One Gets Left Behind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14300976) by [Reeves_Dove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reeves_Dove/pseuds/Reeves_Dove). 



> me n my buddy dove talked a lot about EU and our ocs and she wrote a thing and then i wrote a thing and it's all a big spiral, really. zeimah and basil r good buds

It starts, as most important things start, with a group project. 

Bay Leaf and Houndstooth, an actor and a costumer on one front and presentation partners for the life of Edna Ferber on the other, are together--and then they are not. The thing that replaces Bay Leaf looks like him, mostly, except for the eyes so violently violet that it's frankly hard not to stare and the skeletal thinness. Bay Leaf, while thin, did not have hips this sharp, limbs this long, ribs this prominent. He is obvious. Like all changelings, he is incredibly obvious.

Houndstooth is wary. She knows about Elsewhere and its many dangers. Her mama taught her so that she would never end up like her father. Not-Bay Leaf asks, with an easy-going grin that never fit on his original's face, that she call him Basil now, that he thinks it's a little nicer. She has to tailor his costume to fit again. He's not a bad group partner. He can't touch the powerpoint. The first time he tries with a wondrous fascination, the whole thing crashes, feathers poof out of the disk drive, and they have to start all over again. After that, he only sits back and points out interesting facts from the books he's got stacked up next to him. He always seems to have that stack. It's a little impressive. 

It's hard to forget that Basil is Not-Bay Leaf. His glamor is too close to the real Bay Leaf. Freckles everywhere, bags like he's never slept in his life. He ditches the glasses, though, and his smile is just a little too crooked. Too tall. The Off oversets the Right. 

She doesn't trust him, not at first. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he says, casually, when she's about to cross into a faerie circle she hadn't even realized was there. "Interesting choice," he says in a voice that implies her citation is completely wrong, on another occasion. She realizes Basil is looking out for her, and it's entirely uncomfortable. 

When the presentation passes (with flying colors, maybe a little too literally) and Basil is still there, Houndstooth gets concerned. When she opens her mouth to call out Basil's existence as Not-Bay Leaf, he cuts her off. "He's happy, I promise."

"Happy isn't the same as safe," she says.

"Safe isn't really possible," he says. "But his lover is kind to him and protects him from things that want to hurt him, so I guess he's as safe as he can be right now. He wouldn't want to leave. I'd leave him alone." 

"I'm not you."

"Duh." Basil drinks coffee like lifeblood and eats chocolate like it's heaven, but refuses anything else. He's drinking it now. He's always drinking it. "Look, Houndstooth. Report it to the RA if you want. I can't stop you. Probably for the best." 'But I don't want to go home,' he doesn't say, but Houndstooth can read between the lines.

She reports it anyway, but she has a little sympathy for this changeling who's been nothing but nice to her. 

Their first Deal is perfectly easy. She transcribes his essays for him and he gets her materials for her textile classes. He's English, she's textile, and it really only makes sense that they help each other out. Neither of them are sure why they're in the theatre, but they're not about to complain. Theatre is an important part of EU.

There's a party Houndstooth doesn't quite remember getting to or leaving from. It's delirious, fuzzy, messy. There's gambling in a place where gambling should never be. Someone compliments her hands. Sewing hands, they say. Beautiful hands. Knitting, she corrects them. They take her hands and ask her to come--with? Go? Away?

A different hand with too-long fingers and dusted with freckles closes around her shoulder and pulls her away. She doesn't remember getting home, but she remembers waking up to a changeling boy reading a stack of books in an armchair in the dead of morning. The witching hour. A scary time. He doesn't look at her, but he knows she's awake. She knows she owes him.

She knits him a scarf from handraised lamb, each stitch another thread of gratitude. Basil wears it like a trophy.

After that, things get a little weird. They start hanging out. Basil helps Houndstooth study with that stack of books that never really seems to leave, and she helps him too. She brings him coffee. She brings him chocolate. At first it's necessity. Tests are hard--for both of them. Basil is old, but that doesn't mean he's magically better at writing papers. (Or, he is, but the magic is lost in transcription and leaves them with a well-written paper that's always a few pages too long.)

He says "Freely given," one day after bringing her a nice coffee and the whole campus around them pauses. People glance at them and then look away. See without seeing, hear without hearing. Fae don't say that lightly, and here he is saying it over coffee, idly, as though he doesn't care a wink. Houndstooth stares longer than most, but Basil's casual demeanor doesn't shift. 

Almost every coffee and piece of advice after that has, for her, been freely given, a verbal tic that a faerie should never develop. 

"...We need to make a Deal about this," Basil finally says, after the third time he nearly says 'free' (which turns into 'fuck') arbitrarily. "Something easy."

"Easy for you or easy for me?" Houndstooth is chewing on the back off her pen, but talking to him is second nature now. Talk with fae in general.

"Both."

"What are you suggesting?" Her eyes leave her paper for a moment, but it's too easy to slide into his eyes. They really are some sort of unnatural pansy purple. 

Basil grins. "Give me chocolate and coffee on Tuesdays, I'll give you coffee sometimes and advice that doesn't conflict with my prior obligations." It's too simple, and in that simplicity there's room to twist either end, but Houndstooth sticks her hand out after a moment's thought.

"Shake on it," she says.

He does, and then goes back to his homework. It's their second Deal of any magnitude.

Houndstooth knows, at this point, that Basil has staked some sort of claim on her. He stares too hard at other fae that approach her, his grin too wide and his eyes too steely. They usually back off. He's an easy-going guy, otherwise, epitome of a college student. Falls on his face trying to flirt with buff human boys, complains about papers, drinks coffee as much as any English major ever did.

In her textile classes, Houndstooth's projects get more and more elaborate, and Basil supplies more and more materials. In turn, his papers are longer and she types as much as he likes. Her work is beautiful. It draws attention.

The more people that try to take her, the more frustrated Basil gets. They're hardly ever seen without each other at any manner of party now. He doesn't become her shadow. He doesn't have the time and she doesn't have the patience. Opening night is soon. She stays late. Later. She comes back wrong the next day. 

Not-Houndstooth is the subject of Basil's terrible smile, his horrifyingly cold fury, his face nearly split in half. "Who took her?" he asks. His Sight tells him this is a faerie from his court, the summer the parties the warm drooling sleep and

he gets his answer and his guts drop.

Underhill his gait is nervous. His glamor is gone and without it he feels naked, now. Basil is long, long limbs and feathers matte in the light and bright flashes under his skin gleaming maybeviolet. 

The Lady's grounds are hot and gorgeous and wheat fields and shifting and he loves it here, he does. He just wants, sometimes. Oftentimes. Human life is. It just is. Solid. There. He bends the knee as he sees her, "My Lady," clear in his crooning voice.

"My changeling," she says, friendly. Kind. "Stand." Basil does. "What is it you wish?"

"With all due respect," quite a lot, "I think you've taken something of mine."

"Oh?"

"Your new tailor," forward, but careful.

"Oh." A rustle in the wind. Heat intensified. "She's lovely, isn't she?"

Basil smiles with his slash of a mouth. "Yeah."

"I can see why you would have claimed her." Sun. Bright teeth.

"We're bound in Deals," he tells the Lady. "I'd like her to uphold her ends. She has obligations, my Lady." 

"And so do you," heat heat heat on his feathers burning.

"Of course." From a croon to a croak and back. "Of course I'd give you something."

Basil's frying feathers subside and her smiles are back to something manageable. Slowly, careful of his talons, he unfolds the scarf from around his neck, the one he rarely ever takes off. "Her work, beautiful and thankful, worn months through the turn of the year, well-loved, spun and dyed by hand." 

"Well-loved by who?" 

He's not ashamed. "By me."

"A changeling's love," she reciprocates his coo. "Give me this scarf and you shall have your tailor back." Basil is loathe to let it go, but between the two of them it's hardly a contest. 

"Okay." And he folds it back up the same way he released it, proffers it to his Lady. "Where is she?"

She waves like ocean breeze. "She'll be waiting for you when you leave."

"The moment I leave?"

"The very moment." 

And she is.

Basil's glamor fails when he sees Houndstooth, just out of relief. She stares at him with wide eyes and he takes a moment to pull his magic back together. He pulls her into a hug in the same breath that he says "You owe me." But he's laughing. She starts laughing because he's laughing, but she knows she does.

Later, quietly, she asks him:

"What do you want?" Her voice is pensive. Cautious. 

Basil doesn't answer immediately, only chews on white chocolate cupcake. The stack of books is curiously absent, even though they're in the library. What's worth her life? What's worth all her potential?

"Be my sister," he says, and grins. 

Houndstooth stares for a moment, and a smile starts across her face. "Your sister?" she echoes.

"My sister, blood and bond and true. Your family is my family." He can leave Elsewhere if he has Somewhere to go. He can leave with her. He can exist beyond the confines of Bay Leaf. 

In the end, kinship seems a small price to pay for saving her life.

(When Mama comes to pick them up for break, she looks at the changeling standing next to Houndstooth, sighs deeply, and says, "Well. You always did want a brother.")


	2. Chapter 2

"Why, _Zeimah Dalcye!_ Goodness, you're looking so thin! What are they feeding you at that university?" The kindly old neighbor ropes Houndstooth-- _Zeimah_ \--into one of those ages old, ages long old woman versus young college student conversations. Houndstooth sucks in a sharp breath and finds herself dragged into something when all she wants to do is hope Basil didn't hear.

He does, and the wicked sharpness of his smile has never looked so absolutely fae. 

Mama's hand closes around his elbow like a vice, yanking him into her home. He doesn't need to be welcomed if she drags him in like something a dog might do with a chew toy. Her expression is sour and vicious (and afraid) and she rounds on Basil with a pull to her lips that looks like a snarl. 

No, she's not a dog. She is a wolf, wild, terrifying. Her teeth are a little too sharp to be anything but fae-influenced. Basil wonders if Houndstooth has ever noticed. "It's a nice Name," his voice is dreamy. Her Name feels good in his head and he's sure it would feel better in his mouth. It's never felt so good to know someone's self. Even here, even Somewhere instead of Elsewhere, Basil can feel the power of it. 

"It's hers," Mama snaps, pauses, breathes. 

"Not just hers, now." He's holding it in his metaphorical hands, all the power in the world that matters. He can't help himself. "Zeimah Dalyce," Basil says, and he's only barely aware of Mama's flinch. He wants to repeat it over and over and over again. There are no ears here. The house is salt and iron (it's uncomfortable, really) and he knows that it's safe to say again and again and again and ag

"We need to make a Deal."

ain and again and again and agai

"Are you listening to me?"

_n and again and again and a_

There's someone shaking him by the shoulder.

Mama's expression is fierce (terrified). "You're her brother now, aren't you?"

"Blood and bond and true," Basil says, his smile too wide and his eyes unnerving. "Her family is my family."

"And if her family refuses you?"

"Then the Deal is broken, and there will be consequences." He's never sounded so absolutely fae talking with Houndstooth, but he's high on power and she's not here right now. "I've never taken anyone, you know. Not Underhill." Is it a threat? A reassurance? Basil can't tell. How terrible he must sound. How scared Houndstooth might be, that her mama looks so angry, so enraged with him.

"You're in my home, boy. Don't threaten my daughter."

"My sister," he sighs. The word is grounding. Basil reminds himself, steadies himself, pushes down the rush. His eyes dim, no longer nearly glowing. "I'm not threatening her. I wouldn't take her Underhill unless she wanted to go. I don't want to take her there. I rescued her from the Lady because she would have lost herself, and damn if I wouldn't have flipped my shit."

The tension slackens. He can't tell lies, and it's hard to bend truth with statements so blunt. "If you care about her, boy, we need to make a Deal. Her Name has to stay safe."

"Yeah," he agrees. "Let's draw something up."

Mama pulls out a piece of paper and starts writing down her terms. When she's finished, the gist of them is this: "I will accept you as my own son, blood and bond and true. I will accept you by law, also, and begin the paperwork necessary for adoption. You will protect your sister's Name and life as dearly as you would protect your own."

They both sign the paper. The Deal is set. Basil would have done his half regardless, but he has nothing to lose by putting it down in ink.

By the time Houndstooth finally breaks away from a friendly chat, Mama has made Basil ovaltine and the tension is almost completely gone. It fades as the night goes on, and the two of them share a room. They share a bed. It's a little strange, for siblings, but they're new at this and not particularly typical, either.

Basil thinks about what he's going to do for a while, because he almost never sleeps. He doubts he even could, here in this house of iron.

(He'll later be proved wrong. This is his family's home, after all. That outweighs iron, sometimes.)

The witching hour rolls around by the time Basil shakes Houndstooth awake. "Whuh," she mumbles.

"Zeimah," he says back, quiet and soft and silky. Houndstooth is instantly more awake, though outside of thin places her Name has no power over her. "This knowledge, I give freely: my true Name is Silvar, and I know how pretentious it is."

Oh, he can see in Houndstooth's face. Oh. She reaches out and kisses his forehead, a little smile on her face. "It's not that pretentious."

"Are you kidding me? It sounds like some stupid demon's name."

"But it's yours."

Basil grumbles. "But it's mine, and now it's yours too. I had to level the playing field."

"No, you didn't."

"I was morally obligated to, and, you know. I wanted to. I scared the shit out of Mama when I heard yours. I couldn't stop saying it."

Houndstooth pauses on that. "You scared her?"

"Any wolf would be terrified if her cub was in danger."

"You wouldn't hurt me," and she rolls her eyes.

"No, but she doesn't know that. I'm not human. My definition of hurt could be different than either of yours." 

Basil's face is a little raw, but Houndstooth only swats him. "Don't be stupid. You're smart enough to know the difference."

"And yet."

"Don't 'and yet' me. You and I both know you'd never try to hurt me, fae or human standards."

"...Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go back to sleep, Houndstooth."

She nudges Basil. "You're the one who woke me up."

"Just for a dramatic reveal."

"But now I'm too awake not to do something."

"...Shit."


End file.
